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Description of problem:
I use a backup script to create rotating backups using rsync. The
command that is run is like:

rsync -axR -e ssh --delete /home/ backup-server:/backup/machine/daily.0

and works fine from all other machines, and this machine using test2.

The daily.0 directory already exists, and contains the files from the
previous day. Backup rotation is done by copying this directory to
daily.1 using cp -al. So when the backup runs, the only files copied
across should be those that have changed since the last backup, and
this will typically take less than an hour to complete. Using 2.6.1 I
found the backup was running for hours, and seemed to be copying
everything.

I then tried looking for files with 1 link to them, as that should
represent a changed file... One of these was /etc/fedora-release. The
file in the backup directory contained the contents of
/etc/cups/printer.conf !! Clearly a problem.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
rsync-2.6.1-0.pre1

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.running my backup script will do this. Presumably any similar copy
will fail...
    

Actual Results:  Target file contents differ from source

Expected Results:  Target file contents same as the source

Additional info:

I've compiled the 2.6.2 version of the source, and this fixes the
problem. There was a known problem with 2.6.1 supposedly only relating
to files in the root of the copied tree. It seems more widespread to me.

I've entered this bug to try to ensure that the latest rsync makes it
into the final release, since this is a very severe problem... I've
hosed all of my backups for the test3 machine (obviously acceptable
for testing, but not for release!)